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Web Publishing and Hosting

This site is brought to you by the Electrical and Computer Engineering department

Web Publishing and Hosting

May 13, 2025

Web Services

Please keep in mind the University policy regarding commodity servers/services that prohibits any individual or group from running their own web services locally (e.g. physical machine in office, research area, lab, assigned workspace, etc) without the consent of the Information Security Office.  This includes collaborative services such as wikis. 

The services below are suggested as alternatives provided as common good by the University.  If you feel the services below do not meet your required or anticipated prerequisites, please email help@ece.utexas.edu for alternative solutions, such as leveraging fee for service provided by the University.

If you are a student organization, please read Student Organization Web Publishing Options

University Blog Service 

The University Blog Service is available for use by faculty, staff, and students. The service uses the WordPress platform. Blogs can be created by, and are available for individuals, groups, projects, or departments.

This service does not meet the FERPA requirements for hosting Confidential data and should not be used for course-related purposes.

Service Description

  • Accepts UT EID login authentication

  • ITS maintains security, backups, software updates, etc. at no charge

  • Pre-determined set of themes, including a UT-branded responsive theme optimized for viewing on any screen size

  • Service meets web accessibility requirements and policies - https://webpublishing.utexas.edu/web-accessibility

  • Multiple users with active UT affiliation can have access to update pages

  • Storage:  Each site has a maximum of 250 MB (megabytes) for publishing documents (.pdf, .xls, .ppt, etc.) and multimedia (.png, .jpg, .mov, .wav, etc.). UT Box should be used as a storage location for large documents and media.

  • Plugins & Widgets:  a pre-determine set of plugins & widgets are available to enhance the look and feel or functionality of the site.

  • Track statistics, including how many people have visited your blog

  • Web address example:  https://sites.utexas.edu/<sitename>

  • The use of custom @ece.utexas.edu or @mer.utexas.edu domain/URLs is not available with this service.

Cost

University Blog Service is available at no cost to faculty, staff, and students.

University Blog Service - Help

Example sites

Faculty Member:
http://sites.utexas.edu/jandrews/
https://sites.utexas.edu/mokhtari/
https://sites.utexas.edu/shwetadwip/

Research Group:

https://sites.utexas.edu/xiulingli/

https://sites.utexas.edu/hkim/

https://sites.utexas.edu/etylab/

http://sites.utexas.edu/CRL/

http://sites.utexas.edu/wasserman/

https://sites.utexas.edu/shyamshankar/

 

UT Web 

http://links.utexas.edu/ccvmpl

Web publishing on UT Web is available for colleges, schools, and departments that need to create websites that require Unix-based technologies such as PHP or CGI scripting. Colleges, schools, and departments may provide hosting space to their community members. All users must have a current UT affiliation as faculty or staff to log in to the service.

UT Web users must have experience using Unix-based web technologies such as HTML, PHP, and Apache, and are required to be able to manage files using the Unix command line, SSH or SFTP tools. All UT Web users are expected to know and comply with university standards and policies, specifically those listed at User Responsibilities.

Service Description

The UT Web LAMP stack uses the open-source software packages:

  • User is responsible for security, infrastructure backup, software updates, file backups, and recovery

  • Linux-based environment (Red Hat Enterprise Linux)

  • Apache HTTP server

  • MySQL databases (local installations)

  • PHP programming language support

  • Limit storage usage to 10 GB per site

  • Custom departmental domains are available (i.e., www.sitename@ece.utexas.edu or @mer.utexas.edu).

  • Backups:  backups are self-managed by the user/owner of the site directory

  • Unix shell access via UT EID

  • Access to both Git and SVN version control tools

  • CGI Scripting

Cost

UT Web hosting is currently available to university departments at no cost.

Example sites

Research Group:

http://lca.ece.utexas.edu
http://slam.ece.utexas.edu/
http://aspires.ece.utexas.edu
http://spark.ece.utexas.edu

University Wiki Service (UWS)

  • ITS-managed Atlasssian Confluence Wiki Software

  • Easy-to-use web-based documentation tool

  • Great for departmental or service knowledge capture and transfer

  • Able to have multiple contributors with different levels of permission

  • No customization except for logos

  • Web address within cloud.wikis.utexas.edu domain (e.g., cloud.wikis.utexas.edu/wiki/spaces/eceit/)

  • EID authentication for wiki contributors

  • Choose to protect pages with EIDs, or publish publicly available pages for service information

  • Centrally funded service (no cost to departments, faculty, staff, and students)

University Wiki Service Help Pages

UT Drupal Kit (managed)

  • Custom distribution of the Drupal content management system (CMS)

  • Service meets web accessibility requirements and policies - https://webpublishing.utexas.edu/web-accessibility

  • University-branded themes, drag-and-drop page layout tools, and add-ons such as News, Events, Profiles

  • Paid service of $305/year (allows up to 35K unique site visits)

  • Drupal updates, security, themes, and backups are provided by the ITS Drupal Team

Example Sites

https://mrsec.utexas.edu/
https://demo.drupalkit.its.utexas.edu/
https://ecb.utexas.edu/
https://webpublishing.utexas.edu/
https://datacenters.utexas.edu/